A Novel Proof-of-concept Framework for the Exploitation of ConvNets on Whole Slide Images

Abstract

Traditionally, the analysis of histological samples is visually performed by a pathologist, who inspects under the microscope the tissue samples, looking for malignancies and anomalies. This visual assessment is both time consuming and highly unreliable due to the subjectivity of the evaluation. Hence, there are growing efforts towards the automatisation of such analysis, oriented to the development of computer-aided diagnostic tools, with a ever-growing role of techniques based on deep learning. In this work, we analyze some of the issues commonly associated with providing deep learning based techniques to medical professionals. We thus introduce a tool, aimed at both researchers and medical professionals, which simplifies and accelerates the training and exploitation of such models. The outcome of the tool is an attention map representing cancer probability distribution on top of the Whole Slide Image, driving the pathologist through a faster and more accurate diagnostic procedure.